Enchanted
by EbonyIvoryy
Summary: The events following the scene in the hospital where Kirito and Asuna reunite.


**Title: **"Enchanted"  
**Author: **EbonyIvoryy / theothardus  
**Rating: **This is very PG-13.  
**Summary: **The events following the hospital scene in which Kirito and Asuna reunite.  
**Disclaimer:** I wish I owned Sword Art Online. That would have been an awesome novel to publish if it were my idea.  
**A/N: **I recently got myself—rather obsessively—into the SAO fandom, when I come to see that there isn't nearly enough fanfiction, especially of the Kirito/Asuna variety! And so I said, "DAMN I NEED TO WRITE THEM 'CAUSE I SHIP THEM LIKE FEDEX", and so this story was conceived! Expect me to write a lot for SAO since it's lacking and needs good authors to ship the virtual lovebirds. The whole time I wrote this, I had the song "Enchanted" by Owl City in my mind, probably because of the SAO AMV on youtube, LOOKITUP~ So that's where the lyrics and title come from. I hope this fic warms your hearrrt~

* * *

_There I was again tonight forcing laughter, faking smiles  
Same old tired, lonely place,  
Walls of insecurity  
Shifting eyes and vacancy vanished when I saw your face  
All I can say is it was enchanting to meet you_

xxx

Warmth soaked Asuna's delicate fingers, and, in some way, trapped her, enchanted her, in the trance that Kirito-kun's kiss had started. When they hesitantly pulled apart, their lips sounding in the calm quiet of the hospital room, her hazel eyes gave him a glossy look. Her soft maw was barely parted enough to reveal her front teeth, a spot on her lower lip reflecting the misty moonlight.

The sides of Kirito's—or, properly said, _Kazuto_'s—face were heated in contrast to the chill that grabbed the rest of his body. He was subconsciously admiring Asuna's very _real _beauty. She was skinnier than in-game, and notably looked a bit run down, but he only recognized the attributes she had from the very start. Her hair was a chestnut waterfall, cascading down her sides, pressed to her milky cheeks and forehead. Her eyelashes curled around a pair of warm, tear-glazed irises. Her flat, petite nose, her silky mouth, her bony (but previously feminine) frame hiding beneath the loose fabric of a white robe. Although she looked the same, it was real, not virtual. She seemed more touchable, more tangable, now. If you cut her, she would bleed. She wasn't made up of pixels and digits, as was he.

Asuna's hand, currently placed on his arm, twitched at the warm sensation enveloping her digits. She batted her eyelids and looked there, shocked to see that it was blood that caused the sensation. It was temporarily bandaged, but it seemed to be soaking through and into the sleeve of his coat. She pulled her hand away quickly and looked over to him, worry replacing her look of awe.

He gave her a reassuring smile, but her weak and raspy voice spoke anyway. "You need to wrap that up, Kirito-kun. You'll bleed to death."

Kazuto pressed his forehead against hers. He whispered, and because of her being hard of hearing, it looked like he was mouthing, "Yeah."

He didn't mind her calling him by his in-game name too much; as long as it wasn't around others, of course. He just wondered how long it would take for her to get used to "Kazuto".

Asuna wanted to be with Kirigaya Kazuto like this forever—only him and her, emotions keeping them warm, snowflakes floating outside the window, and the fact that they made it out alive blinding their world with nothing but happiness.

Smile fading, Asuna opened her eyes and glanced around, hoping to find something so she could tend to the Black Swordsman's injury. As luck would have it, a roll of gauze sat on a silver table a foot away. She reached for it, but a larger hand beat her to it, grabbing the roll before she could.

"Don't over-exert yourself, Asuna-san," Kazuto said, slowly and clearly, but still not too loudly.

He held out the roll, and naturally, she set one hand on the top of his wrist, the other peeling the gauze into a long enough strand to cut. She didn't break eye contact with him, though, faces close, both wearing content, loving smiles. When Asuna did look down, Kazuto suddenly had a pair of tiny silver scissors in his hand. She took them and carefully snipped into the gauze. She could feel his eyes on her. Never, not even by her own parents, has she felt this loved and cherished.

As she pulled out another strand, her pull brought him in closer. She bit her bottom lip, peering up to him, watching him maintain that calm, soft smile. She pulled out another piece, the sticky rip ringing in their ears, even Asuna's inactive ones, which only pulled Kazuto closer.

"My arms feel like noodles," she admitted, her lips curled up in embarrassment. She barely managed to unpeel the gauze. It rendered her to feeling weak, useless, and she hated that feeling.

"I was having some trouble—" Asuna started to say, but stopped when Kazuto caressed her scissor-bearing hand, intertwining his fingers with hers as he had them cut the gauze together.

It was done in slow movements, and perhaps dangerously, considering they weren't looking at where the scissors were going, but at one another. It seemed they couldn't look away, now that they were together in real life—something he and she longed for since their marriage in SAO.

Asuna wrapped the white bandage around Kazuto's arm, a bit tightly for his taste, but he was too focused on her to feel the uncomfortable restraint. The same applied to her, who was too intrigued with the boy that made fireworks go off in her stomach to notice how tightly she applied the bandage.

While she was finishing up tending to his wound, he glanced behind her, to the window where he once saw their reflections walk away, hand-in-hand. He was half-hoping to see them again. How odd it was. Many would assume that after his experience, he wouldn't want set foot near nerve gear again, yet he was missing that life already.

Then that moment of Satori hit him. He looked past the fog of the window _and _the fog of his mind. He saw the tops of buildings, clouds covering the eternal sky, people huddling underneath umbrellas, people taking shelter in shops. SAO was not life. This was life. And there was no second chance; no life besides this one. He only had one life. All this time he wasted. All this time, being scared of what was real. What was surrounding him each and every day. While he enjoyed computers and the world of MMORPG, there was nothing like a view that is real, a kiss that is real, a laugh that is real. Perhaps he just hadn't met that person who made it all worthwhile yet. But now, he had no excuses. He had to live this life, as Kirigaya Kazuto, as full as Kirito's, with Yuuki Asuna at his side.

"Yes," he hissed to himself.

Asuna saw his mouth move from the corner of her eye and cupped her ear toward him. "I'm sorry, I didn't get that."

He turned to her with no response at first, grasping the sides of her arms with a firm grip.

"Let's experience everything together, Asuna, you and me, from now on," he said, loud enough for her to hear.

She stared blankly for seconds, thinking of how she should respond. Before she could think it out, Kazuto pulled her closer and closer until their hearts beat as one. He craned his neck so that his mouth was buried into the hair at the side of her head, one large breath blowing against her eardrum.

"Let's see the ocean... and the northern lights... and ride rollercoasters until we throw up, and climb mountains to the very top, and decorate Christmas trees, and..."

He leaned back to say to her face, "...We'll take pictures of these memories so that noone can say they never happened."

Asuna only got half of that, but half was enough to make her most intense emotions resurface.

Her lips quivered. She grabbed a moist cotton ball set next to the gauze, dabbing it against the laceration in his cheek. The skin around the cut was irritated, partly from the biting cold.

"We will," she uttered, giving his other uninjured, tear-stained cheek a loving, lingering kiss.

Asuna felt so priveledged that he wanted to spend his life with her; enchanted. She was enchanted to have met him.

xxx

_Please don't be in love with someone else  
Please don't have anybody waiting on you  
Please don't be in love with someone else  
Please don't have anybody waiting on you  
...I was enchanted to meet you, too...  
_

**_fin_**


End file.
